"Seelenreise" - part 1

For the last 3 weeks I have been all over Switzerland and Germany on what I have dubbed my "Seelenreise," which means (literally) "soul journey." The reason that I called it my soul trip is that for the second half of the trip I traveled in Germany to the places my family is from and also to places of import to a bassoonist. Details to follow.

The first part of the trip took place in Switzerland, to where my friend Danny and I traveled. We flew from Vienna to Cologne, Germany, and spent a day there (en route to Basel) and we drank wonderful Koelsch beer (it's native to Cologne, and a requirement of all visitors of age), and we also got a taste of the pending Carneval celebrations (that we actually missed by being 2 days early). Now that is a town that knows how to throw a pagan celebration!

Then we went on our way to Zurich by plane (I heart Germanwings) and took the train to Basel, Switzerland where we found our hostel despite all odds. Staying at the hostel was quite an experience, to say the least. Interesting people stayed there - Basel, is pretty expensive, so most people not from Switzerland can't afford to stay in a hotel. We met some interesting Indian men who were attending a business convention. They were so great - they cooked a vegeterian dinner for us one night and they were just the nicest folks. They gave Danny a sample of their products - I think one thing was a spray deoderant and I can't remember what the other thing was. We met people from Libya and Romania, too.

In addition to that we met a very not-nice man at the desk who gave us a hard time. We played a little good cop-bad cop and eventually got things worked out. I guess there are just people like that. The hostel was a tad on the, shall we say, *rustic* side… that sometimes is the case with hostels. So, we did research in Basel at the internationally renouned Paul Sacher Stiftung (they have a great collection of Stravinsky manuscript, Kyle!) and then on the weekend we went back to Zurich to do a little site-seeing. It was a great town, and the hostel we stayed in there was the best one I have been to. It was a good experience. Our impression of Switzerland was that it was very clean and very expensive. We ate a lot of Kebaps (it’s a kind of Turkish sandwhich you buy on the street) just because they were cheap and one day we even ate at *gasp* McDonalds, although Danny paid 11 Swiss Francs for his “value” meal. That’s not actually as much as it sounds like, although it is like 8 dollars US.

So, then we went back to Cologne on the first of March and instead of seeing the city again, and since it was so close, we went to Bonn instead. That’s where Beethoven was born and grew up. So we went to the Beethoven house (which, let me tell you, is SO much cooler than the Mozart house) in Bonn and also walked around a lot. It was a great town. Then I dropped Danny off at the airport and started my lone Seelenreise.

The first night I stayed with my friend, Reiner’s sister and brother-in-law, who are very cool people I found out. They live outside of Cologne, so I got to meet their doggie, “Little Dog” (she's a chihuahua) and see the city a little bit more, courtesy of Kike ("kee-kay" from the name, "Enrique"). Enrique and Monika are truly an international couple. Monika is from Cologne, but Enrique is from Columbia. They met through Reiner when he and Enrique were both studying as undergrads at UNT. So, they both speak English, and naturally Monika speaks German and Enrique speaks Spanish. So, they speak English to each other! Can you imagine being married to someone and both people are speaking not their first language? Pretty amazing.

More on the next 10 days in my next update.